This is a backup drive, connected to USB via a SATA adapter. It's been working fine for some months. All of a sudden my XP SP3 machine refuses to recognize it.

It spins up when power is applied but other than that, nothing. Usually the red led in the adapter plug starts blinking a few seconds after the usb cable is connected and then the drive appears in the file manager. But this drive...not.

The adapter is fine...a second identical Seagate HD is detected without problems.

I used Hard Disk Sentinel to scan for the missing drive. It notes there is a USB device connected but there is no other info listed, as there is with "good" drives.

It's also listed in Device Manager as a USB drive, shown as working ok but no other info.

Scanning the drive with various recovery progs is not possible because they can't access what's on the drive.